My eyes and ears were opening up.  When I came back for Spring Break my dad found an open jam at the 219 Club in Alexandria, VA.  It was a cool bar, the first adult hangout bar I'd ever been to.  The guys at the jam told me "this jam is the best school  in the world: tuition is free and you can drink all the beer you want."  In the beginning they also told me to go home and learn how to play time "and don't come back `till you do."  I played there for 5 years on breaks from college.  It turned out to be the best school I could have gotten.  In college, I had a jazz ensemble for a couple of years which gave me confidence in leading tunes.  The jam gave me a deeper understanding of what was possible, but I rarely felt like I was leading.

My confidence as a jazz drummer got a major boost the year after I graduated from college.  My parents invited me to spend the year with them in Lyon, France to learn French and study jazz.  Through a series of coincidences I landed an audition in the Conservatoire Nationalé de Region.  Ironically what helped me get into the school was that I was able to jam to the Charlie Parker tune Au Privave.  All those years of jamming at the 219 club really paid off.  That year in Lyon, I played and studied intensely.  I continued jamming, but at a place called Le Hot Club.  My technique improved drastically.  I finally learned how to do the finger control that Paul talked to me about 4 years earlier.   By the end of the year, I was banging on things, hearing drum licks in my head and loving the drums.  I also knew that I did not want to be a professional drummer.  I loved jazz, but I did not like hanging out with musicians 24/7, nor did I want to have to play pop gigs just to pay the rent.  I took my mom's advice from twelfth grade -- don't be a musician if all you want to play is jazz.  Get a real job and play what you want for fun.  So I moved to Austin, Texas and that's what I'm doing.